To the TUC to talk about how trade unions manage now there are no specialist labour and industrial correspondents to report on them, and the answer is: with difficulty. Peter Hitchens, John Lloyd, Paul Routledge et al.
Unions are essentially anti-establishment (or else they are nothing) and the establishment media is bound to dislike them. When they were powerful, at least they had, if not friends at court, at least acquantances at court: journalists who had some idea what they did, and why they did it.
Being an industrial correspondent was a prestige job. Mosty of them wouldn't have wanted to go into the lobby. "What would I want to mix with any old cabinet minister for? I'm on fancy-a-pint terms with the general secretary of the Transport and General Workers Union."
The difference - having come back to doing union media relations after a very long gap - is this. When I last did it, newspapers said: "It comes from the unions - but it's a good story." Now they say: "It's a good story - but it comes from the unions."
Which is why you probably still don't know the full extent of the scandal surrounding AssetCo, the company which has the contract to own and maintain all London and Lincolnshire's fire engines.
You don't yet. But I'm determined you soon will.